


oh, i was your family and you were mine

by jabamis



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Healing, Light Angst, M/M, eremin is implied, if you can call it that, you can read it platonically
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-22
Updated: 2020-10-22
Packaged: 2021-03-09 07:14:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27149932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jabamis/pseuds/jabamis
Summary: Armin’s small solace was that he was sure Eren couldn’t be dead.  After all he had been through, Eren wouldn’t lay down and die that easily.So, then, why did he feel like he was mourning?—snktober day 22: mourning
Relationships: Armin Arlert/Eren Yeager, Mikasa Ackerman & Armin Arlert, Mikasa Ackerman & Armin Arlert & Eren Yeager
Comments: 3
Kudos: 43
Collections: SNKTOBER Month 2020





	oh, i was your family and you were mine

**Author's Note:**

> haven't written something in ages. this is messy and i wrote it when i was sad, but i hope you all enjoy it regardless. <3  
> also, yes, armin in canon cuts his hair to the shortest length before eren leaves but i am taking creative liberties because i can.  
> title is from this time last year by rina sawayama

There is something utterly absurd about watching a known prodigy, one of humanity’s strongest soldiers, stare at a pair of scissors as if they were a foreign and potentially dangerous object when she can wield several thunder spears on a single arm. It is so ridiculous, seeing the way Mikasa narrows her eyes and warily opens and closes the shears with a soft snip, deafening in the silence of the bathroom, that Armin cannot help but giggle. The sound shatters the stillness of the room. The corner of her mouth ticks upward into one of her rare smiles, which have been growing even rarer as of late.

His absence is palpable. That did not mean he and Mikasa were not friends without him to bind them— though they had met through Eren, their friendship stands alone when necessary and they had spent plenty of time together when Eren was unavailable even as kids. However, his current absence cannot be explained by his mother telling Armin and Mikasa that their friend had fallen ill with a head cold and wasn’t allowed outside until he was healthy again. It was a sickness that could not be cured by a couple of days in bed that tore Eren away from the two this time, something that perhaps they had let fester too long and was no longer curable. Not, at least, until Eren came back. If he ever did. Armin’s small solace was that he was sure Eren couldn’t be dead. After all he had been through, Eren wouldn’t lay down and die that easily.

So, then, why did he feel like he was mourning?

“Are you sure that you want to do this?”

Mikasa snaps him out of the ever-winding and treacherous road of his thoughts. He’s not sure if she senses when he’s spiraling down a path he shouldn’t wander on, but she always intervenes in ways that are sometimes gentle, sometimes not. Almost absent-mindedly, Armin twirls a strand of hair around his finger. It isn’t that he’s never cut his hair before— he always kept it maintained a little past chin-length at the very least in the past. Over the past few years, he'd gone through phases where he cut it shorter than that, though never as short as he'd instructed Mikasa to cut it. In the past, he had been unsure if he wanted to change something that reminded him so clearly of his childhood when the days were still bright. Now, even when the sun shines, everything feels like it is a hazy gray.

Notably (and embarrassingly), his long hair reminds him of Eren. Eren would get so angry with him if he ever mentioned it to anyone, but he used to play with Armin’s hair when he was bored or clingy, even try to braid it messily, though only Mikasa had the precision to do such a thing properly. Armin sometimes feels like if his hair is still long, he can run his hands through it still like Eren used to and pretend he was still there. He stopped doing that years ago, of course, when he started to shut himself off from him and Mikasa. The last time Eren had been so openly affectionate was after retaking Wall Maria when he and Mikasa were let out of the cells. With the lack of Survey Corps members following the event, there had been plenty of private rooms. The three of them curled up around each other like they used to back before the wall fell and after, when each other was all they had, gathering warmth from each other's bodies during both the physical and metaphorical winters of their lives. Maybe, if Armin kept it long, he could hold onto that last memory of Eren gently massaging his scalp, chin tucked over his head.

But no, that would never work, Armin thinks, because Eren’s hands were much larger than his, fingers more crooked and calloused. It would never feel the same. Armin realizes that he had subconsciously threaded his own smaller hands through his hair and cupped the back of his neck in the way Eren always used to. The realization almost makes him shiver.

So, then, the hair had to go. He also thinks it probably makes him look too young. A high-ranking member of the Survey Corps had to look the part, he thought. He's already lacking in height and his face is much softer than other people's, barely buffered by the slight sharpening of his jawline and marginal loss of stubborn baby-fat in his cheeks over the past couple of years. Furthermore, longer hair gets in the way. He remembers Mikasa telling him that back when they first started military training late at night as she placed the pair of scissors in his hands— although Mikasa had never cut his hair, Armin has been cutting hers for years. Whenever he asked her to return the favor, she claimed it would be too messy if she did it. As a result, Armin typically asked Sasha for assistance, but she was off running around with that Marleyan boy at the moment, and Armin didn’t want to steal love away from someone just because the world has decided he cannot have it.

Better to end that train of thought before it truly begins. “Yes, I still want to cut it.”  
Mikasa still hesitates, though, and Armin’s amazed by how shy she can be considering the bloodshed she can cause. “...Are you sure you want me to cut it?”

It feels better like this anyhow. It feels good to connect with Mikasa like this. All they have is each other, now— just the two of them, navigating their way through the situation they’ve found themselves in. He’s worried about her, though she refuses to talk about how she is feeling about Eren’s disappearance whenever Armin tentatively tries to coax her into it. But the frame of purple around her red-rimmed and glassy, faraway eyes tells Armin all he needs to know. He feels helpless, and he knows she does too whenever he breaks down again— he has never been as composed as Mikasa. And yet, she always places a hand between his shoulder blades, rubbing soothing circles when he’s sobbing or dry heaving like he is still trying to rid his body of Bertolt. Sometimes, she’ll ask him in desperation, “Please, Armin, please tell me what I can do to help you.” He can always hear the unspoken, “I don’t want to lose you too,” behind her words, and it hurts to know that he’s making her pain worse. He is, and always has been, a burden.

Even Mikasa needed simple ways to feel useful, like cutting someone else’s hair. They both needed something mundane to help ease their minds as their world crumbles around them, though the crumbling seems to have been constant since they were 10. It is just that this time, it feels worse than seeing the gate kicked in. The hole in Wall Maria could not compare to the gaping hole left in their lives now.

“Yes, I want you to cut it. You’ll do fine,” Armin responds, keeping his tone as light as possible despite the sickening feeling in his chest and swirling thoughts in his mind. “If you want, I can even trim yours once you’re done with mine. Only if you want, of course.”

Mikasa once again looks at the pair of scissors intensely before nodding curtly as if she’d just accepted a job the fate of humanity rides on. The display causes Armin to laugh softly again, then harder, to the point where even Mikasa lets out one of her windchime-like giggles. Laughter replaces the spaces where they want to cry.

Once the noise dies down, she crouches behind Armin on the floor where he’d situated for optimal stability. “Okay...um...just...keep your head straight, okay? Don’t move, I’ll move your head wherever I need to. That’s what you do for me, right?” Armin hums an affirmative, letting her take hold of his head to position it at the proper angle. Her slender fingers are nothing like Eren’s, either. Yet, they have their own soothing properties. The touch causes a lump to form in his throat even though it also makes him feel slightly more whole again.

As Mikasa tries to determine which unlucky piece is getting sliced off first, Armin considers why he feels like he is grieving the death of someone close to him when, for once, no death had happened. He realizes with startling clarity that death is less about the physical act of dying, but of disappearance, of someone that was once there vanishing, of change. The old Eren, as Armin had known him, had died long ago in that sense of the word. He had become a stranger right before Armin's eyes. When Mikasa brings the scissors to a lock of shiny blond hair, Armin wonders if the person he was is dying, too.

The scissors close, the lock falls, and Armin hopes it lifts some weight from his heavy heart.


End file.
